Among the people I knew from childhood, none was stranger than Claire Kittinger, who at the time owned our local corner bar TEACO. He was very eccentric, even more than my grandmother Ollie. TEACO was just another “beer joint” among 4 others that were within a mile radius of our place. In Berlinville to the west there was “Pinkies” and “China Town” (both are gone now). To the east there was TEACO (also gone now) and Bar 61 to the north in Berlin Heights (still there). I often wonder, “Where have all the beer joints gone”? We used to see them on every street corner when we were kids, now there’s very few of them anymore. The ones that remain are now called the trendy names of "Pubs" or "Taverns" rather than "bars". They all feature "karaoke nights", which has caused the proliferation of bad singing with a soundtrack.

 

By way of a little background, there has always been a question of how TEACO got its name. Some say it stands for “Tillinghast Corner” because our family sold the corner lot to them. To me that’s unlikely because that doesn’t account for the “A” in the name. The other theory was that when it was first built in the 1920's, it was a roadside restaurant, and TEACO is short for “Tea and coffee”. This is the theory I believe to be the correct one since that would account for the “A” in the name.

 

When Claire Kittinger owned it when I was a kid I spent a lot of time there mainly because when ever I went anywhere with my father or uncle Ned, they would ALWAYS stop there on either the way or way back from wherever we were going. In fact sometimes they would stop both on the way and the way back! When we got inside and sat down to order drinks (I always ordered Mission orange pop). If you didn’t immediately tell Claire what you wanted when he came out from the back room, he would immediately go back into the room! Sometimes it was only 2 or 3 seconds until he left! After a little while he would come back out and then you immediately told him what you wanted. You had to do it fast and try not to take a breath before hand or you might end up waiting again until he decided to come back out. One thing he had there was smoked herring that came in a cellophane pack. Boy those were good! I’ve looked around over the years and I’ve never seen any since. Most likely they only sell them in bars. Since I haven't been in a bar for the last 41 years, I wonder if they still sell them there. Since neither I nor any of my acquaintances go to bars, I may never know if I can still get smoked herring. I have entertained the idea of advertising in the Personal section of the classified newspaper ads. "Former bar patron seeking person that frequents Pubs and Taverns to acquire a pack of smoked herring. Very generous commission paid for each pack of smoked herring aquired. Please, no karaoke schedules! Please email Imisssmokedherringandwouldliketofindsomeifthey stillselltheminbars@aol.com.  

 

Claire made the place into a fortress and had bars on the windows and a swinging barred door inside the 2 outside doors. I always heard that he slept with a pistol under his pillow since he lived in the back of the building. I sleep with a 9mm pistol in my bedside table drawer and not under my pillow. I would imagine that a pistol under a pillow would make it lumpy. Even more so in my case since I also keep 3 loaded clips with it. Between that and 3 "killer cats", I haven't yet been bothered by nocturnal intrusions of Commies, terrorists and other fellow travelers such as liberals.

 

Speaking of cats, one time Claire decided to get a bunch of cats. In order to keep them around, he built a big chicken wire enclosure with 4X4 posts. Sometimes people would tease Claire and say, “Hey Claire, do you think that will hold the cats in alright?”  He would always retort with, “I sure hope so”. I mean good grief; the enclosure he built for all the cats could have held lions safely! Since I have always liked cats, I would often go look at them as they played. I don’t remember how many cats he had inside the large enclosure, but there were a lot of them. The enclosure went almost the entire length of the west side of the building and was about 6 or 8 feet wide the best I can recall. I felt like I was at a zoo!

 

There was a jukebox in the southeast corner and Claire eventually posted a sign over it that stated, "Posatively No Dancing". The misspelling of "Positively" was based on a consensus of the majority of customers he asked about how to spell it! He probably asked them after a few too many drinks. Even as a little kid I knew it was not spelled correctly. One cool thing about the Juke Box was that if I happened to be there when the "Juke Box guy" came to update the records, he would give me some of the old records if I hung around him long enough. Now that I reflect on that, he probably did it to get rid of me rather than just being generous. Consequently, I had a great collection of old worn 45 records. Being an annoying kid did have its advantages! This also worked when our dad's and Uncle Ned's drinking buddies came to visit. After aggravating the men with my persistent presence, they would give me a dime and tell me to "go buy a treat". If I were really being a pest, Roger Waite, one of the frequent visitors, would give me a quarter! I eventually found that the longer the guys were there and the more they drank, the more profitable it was! This financed a regular routine of taking the money and heading to TEACO to spend it on my favorite cuisines. Since our father and uncle had several men friends who frequently stopped by and drank heavily, my main diet was Mission Orange pop and salted dried herring at TEACO. Unfortunately, when I reached the pre-teens, the men stopped paying me to keep away from them. They just said, "Get the h--- out of here!

 

Tim and I enjoyed our many times at TEACO and continued to until the "Nuisance Law" was enacted. Oh, you don't know what this law is. Well, you will just have to read the following story: